Primary Menu

Angry White Guys

I’ve never cared about politics and my lack of interested holds true for the current presidential race. I don’t normally follow elections closely but I try to stay up to date on the current issues. I haven’t even done that this year. I feel like I’ve completely ignored the race so far. However, in the past couple days I’ve tried to play catch up and get a general over view of how things are going. Here is a political update from someone who doesn’t follow politics:

I consider myself a fair representation of the rest of the country. If you asked most people about the election, they would be probably know just as much as I do.

One of the main reasons for my lack of attention is that I expect President Obama to win. It’s an assumption I’ve had since the race began. Why pay attention when you already know the ending right? As the election has gone on I was a little surprised that Romney was doing well. The landslide slam dunk I thought would happen was much closer in poll numbers. Even still, I still expect Obama will pull it out in the end. Whether you consider his win a clear victory or an upset is up to you.

Maybe it’s not that I assume Obama will win, it’s that I know the Republicans will lose. Mitt Romney seems like a nice enough guy if you take away his social views. During the early primaries I was shocked that the Republicans might be dumb enough to back Rick Santorum. There was a pretty pathetic bunch to choose from and Romney was clearly the only sane one in the bunch. Although, can you imagine the comedic shit show that would have resulted if Santorum got the nomination? That’s an alternate universe I’d like to visit for a day.

Romney might be sane but he’s also a stiff boring white guy. As every year passes, the Republicans seem to be loosing touching with modern society. A well dress white guy with good hair isn’t enough anymore. I read a good article on comments made by conservative Senator Lindsey Graham on the Huffington Post last night. He said it best:

“Mitt Romney should be headed for a win over President Barack Obama, with coattails for down-ticket offices. But in acknowledging a trend in the polls against the GOP, Graham said it would show that America’s demographics have so changed — in Democrats’ favor — that a president’s stewardship of the economy no longer is a deciding factor.

“If we lose this election, performance as president doesn’t matter like it used to,” Graham said in a discussion with The Huffington Post and several other reporters outside the Senate chamber last week.

“There’s a reason no president has ever been reelected with an economy like this,” Graham said. “It would tell me that it’s more of a demographic race for president than it is a performance-based race. And that may be where we’re at as a nation, and maybe where we are as a party, and we just don’t know it.”

Graham, who said earlier that the country wasn’t “generating enough angry, white guys” to keep the GOP in business, was referring to the growing trend of Republicans depending on white voters to win elections.

It’s a startling admission from a Southern white politician, but one he stood by. “If he’s able to do this, President Obama’s rewritten history,” Graham said. “If we lose as Republicans, we’re going to have to ask ourselves, who are we going to be? If we don’t beat this guy, who are we going to be?”